SPECIAL FEATURE

Welcome to The Machine

BY TOM FRANCISKOVICH

There is so much to love about the Central Coast, and I truly cannot imagine living anywhere else. But, I have to be honest. I have always had some lingering doubts about the wisdom of living so close to a nuclear power facility. And, now being really, really honest… I prefer not to think about it, because when I do my mind goes to weird places and visions of mushroom clouds dance in my head. I have heard all of the arguments for and against nuclear energy, and I can understand both points of view. But, at the end of the day, I am a hands-on, visual learner sort-of-guy. I need to touch it before I “get it.” With that in mind, and wanting to for once and for all really “get it,” really understand nuclear power, really understand the realities of living next to such an awesomely powerful generator, I decided to head out to Diablo Canyon to see it for myself. And I would like to invite you to come along with me...

It’s another stunning, crystal clear morning on the Avila Bay. And as we crest the summit in our unmarked, white SUV, I strain to look around the bend for the distinctive nuclear domes. But, nothing can be seen except miles of unblemished coastal bluff. With the exception of some cows roaming the hills, the land is pristine, untouched. As we drive along further and further, I begin to look at my watch, and like my four-yearold son, I ask the question, “How much longer?” I was surprised by the vast area of land Diablo inhabits, the majority of which is designated by its owner, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), to be in its “natural state.” The company is quick to use the term “steward of the land” as opposed to “land owner” in describing its role with the 750-acres south of Montaña de Oro known as Diablo Canyon. With the exception of an impeccably maintained paved road and a series of corporate signs encouraging “Safety First,” it would be impossible to know if it were 2014 or 1714. The surrounding land is truly majestic in its rugged naturalness. Rounding the last corner and dropping down a slight grade, the power plant finally comes into view. My most notable observation is that the two domes that clearly identify a nuclear facility seem like such a small part of the overall picture. The landscape unfolding before me was one of a small town with people doing all the activities necessary to keep a small town running. Off to one side, a crew was working on what appeared to be sewer pipes. To the left another group was pushing some dirt around with a small Bobcat tractor. At this point, my note-taking is interrupted by a security guard at a checkpoint who leans into my window and politely asks me to step out of the vehicle and hand over the backpack and camera sitting between my feet on the floorboard. After a quick inspection, my possessions are returned. “Okay, you’re all set,” he says, “Welcome to The Machine.”

In 1938, a German chemist named Otto Hahn was messing around in his Berlin-based “Holzwerstatt” (woodworking shop) with some radioactive material when he began to see things that he did not expect. When the nucleus of radioactive material was divided, a massive exothermic reaction occurred. In other words, a whole lot of energy was released from one very small bit of matter. More intriguing still, the matter did not seem to breakdown as expected. Rather than taking on the properties of something like a log in a fireplace—which soon turns to ash—the radioactive material kept going, and going. Hahn, who came to be known as “the father of nuclear chemistry” continued to experiment in his little workshop. Over time he began to realize the implications for what he had discovered. In an ironic twist, Hahn was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1944—just one year before his discovery led to the instant vaporization of nearly a quarter of a million Japanese civilians. While the atom bomb brought an end to hostilities in World War II, it also marked the unofficial beginning of the Cold War. Although the United States and the Soviet Union had been allies up to that point— mostly in the sense that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—the awesome power unleashed over those two summer days in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was perceived as a clear and present danger to the Kremlin. And almost immediately after Stalin received his first account of what happened in Japan, he likely whispered to himself: “We need one of those bombs.” From that point forward, the Soviets scrambled to arm themselves in the same way that their American foes had, and if one was good, two would certainly be better. Eventually the Cold Warriors would reach a point where they would be able to blow each other up, as well as the entire planet, many times over. While the saber rattling hawks involved in the silent conflict where pushing to escalate the Arms Race, others began to see nuclear power in a different light. Their question was not, “How can we obliterate more commies?” But, what if we used this stuff to generate our electricity? Since nuclear power has a 1+1=3 quality to it, in that a very small amount of matter produces a massive amount of energy, why not use it in a way that would benefit mankind. Interestingly enough, the US Navy, by 1954, had figured out a way to keep its submarines under water for a very long time: small onboard nuclear reactors. As the USS Nautilus was keeping a watchful eye on Soviet frigates in the Bering Sea, scientists stateside continued to press the question: Why not use nuclear to power our homes?

After clearing the second security checkpoint, we parked the car and walked toward the main entrance, stopping for a few minutes to watch a beautiful, continually looping video produced by PG&E in the visitors lounge. We then moved on to the employee entrance. There I turned over my driver’s license and was subjected to another search, this one more thorough. After verifying that the background check I had submitted a week prior had cleared, I was led through a full-length turnstile complete with metal detection. When the green light on the top of the steel cage flashed “Ok,” I heard a loud “click” and the lock automatically opened. On the other side, a machine gun wielding guard sporting all black commando gear did a full pat down, including waving a metal detecting wand over every square inch of my person. At that point I was handed back my notepad, digital voice recorder, and camera with explicit instructions on what I could and could not photograph at the plant. With “Visitor” highlighted clearly in yellow across the top of my I.D. badge now hanging around my neck, we exited the security pavilion and headed toward the six-story office building that sits next to the two concrete domes. After an elevator ride to the top floor, we made a left and then a right turn down two long corridors to find ourselves outside of a non-descript conference room. A mustachioed, middle-aged man with closely cropped chestnut-colored hair whose nose bridge is slightly askew to the left, stood up from the long Birchwood table with his right hand outstretched. “Hello, I’m Ed Halpin, Chief Nuclear Officer.” If there ever was a Wizard Oz at Diablo Canyon, this is the guy. In a slow, rhythmic cadence Halpin begins ticking off facts and figures with an accent that reveals a Long Island upbringing. After each point he pauses to allow me to keep pace with my note-taking. “There are one hundred nuclear power plants operating in the United States right now with five under construction, and they provide about 19% of the electrical demand.” The bullet points continue. “Throughout the world there are 435 nuclear

power plants, and 72 are under construction. And those numbers continue to grow every year because, quite frankly, the world is turning more toward nuclear to reach its power demands. It’s reliable, it’s safe, it is a powerful technology and, yet, it has to be correctly controlled. And, it is friendly to the environment. So, for the big picture, we will not achieve what we want to achieve with regard to greenhouse gas reductions without nuclear power.” Halpin, a champion Naval Academy boxer in the 125-pound weight class who once entered the ring with an already broken nose, has answers for all my questions. And, he does not so much as flinch or even gesture with his hands to answer them. “What about Fukushima? Couldn’t that happen here?” “No,” he states flatly. “And, here’s why. I just came back from Fukushima and the reason for their problems was due to the fact that they did not have sufficient redundancy. They did not have the ability to cool their reactors because their pumps were taken out by the tsunami,” Halpin explains. “But, what about us? What about a tsunami happening here? And what about the fact that Diablo sits near a few different fault lines?” I ask. Point by point, Halpin breaks it down with a list of calm, cool responses: “Tsunamis are not possible to the degree it happened there.” Seismic modeling shows that the largest tsunami possible would produce a 45-foot wave surge at Diablo. The cliffs there are 85-feet high. “The fault lines near Diablo are the most studied in the world, and Hosgri’s strongest possible earthquake would not be a problem for us. Besides that, assuming the worst case, we have many layers of redundancy.” Following the discussion of Fukushima, I ask the question: “What about the spent fuel rods?”

A single fuel pellet of U-235 (low-enriched uranium) is about the size of two number-two pencil erasers stacked on top of one another. One of those pellets provides the same level of fuel as one ton of coal. A fuel rod consists of 375 of those pellets. And, 264 rods make up an assembly, with 193 assemblies per reactor. Each of those assemblies employs a mechanism to automatically disengage the pellets should the internal temperature rise beyond its normal zone or if it detects any seismic movement. Naturally occurring uranium—one-third of the world’s supply is mined from the mountains of Kazakhstan—is .72% U-235. It is then enriched to between 3% and 5%, which is what supplies nuclear power plants. In order for it to be weapons grade uranium, it must be enriched to 90% U-235. In other words, it is not possible for Diablo Canyon to produce a mushroom cloud.

Yet, there is still a lot of radioactive waste, which makes it difficult to take the intellectual leap suggesting that nuclear is “friendly to the environment.” Contrary to coal-fired plants, where carbon emissions escape into the atmosphere, Halpin is fond of saying, “I know where my waste is.” And, he does make a good point. The average coal-fired power plant generates an estimated 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge each year, which goes along with a long list of toxic substances including mercury and arsenic. At Diablo Canyon, where there are no carbon emissions emanating from its power generation process, the waste sits up on the hill in Easter Island-like concrete reinforced containers awaiting further instructions. And, as it turns out, there’s gold in them thar spent fuel rods.

After they are removed from the reactor and deemed “spent,” fully 90% of the fuel remains in those U-235 pellets. Through reprocessing it is possible to take the remaining energy and essentially recycle it to recharge the fuel pellets. Despite the fact that ten other countries currently reprocess their spent fuel, in the United States it has been somewhat of a political football. In the 1970’s, fearing the weaponization of reprocessed fuel, the Carter Administration decided to punt. And, since that time there has not been the political will to restart the conversation in a meaningful way. John McCain, during his failed presidential bid in 2008, was the last big-name politician to make a full-throated case for reprocessing. As it stands now, according to Halpin, if you were to take all of the spent fuel from every United States-based nuclear reactor over the past 40 years, it would fill a football field to the height of the top of the goalposts. That waste now sits patiently awaiting a trip to the promised land—somewhere like Yucca Mountain, a depository for spent fuel that the feds continue to dangle just out of reach—or some other facility where it could be reprocessed and brought back for a second shot at life inside a reactor. In 1969, a local woman put a pen to paper imploring Central Coast residents who shared her “sadness and frustration at the needless loss of life in Vietnam” to join her in “searching out ways to act effectively as a group.” Her letter to the editor resonated throughout the community and shortly thereafter, in an undersized San Luis Obispo living room, Mothers for Peace was formed. As the women coalesced around their collective efforts to apply pressure on politicians, the Southeast Asian conflict began to wane. Then, in 1973 the non-profit shifted its attention to the safety of the newly built Diablo Canyon Power Plant and has been a thorn in the side of the operation ever since. Raising hell at every turn, the mothers— many of them now grandmothers—serve as a scrappy, perennially underfunded local watchdog. One of its members, Linda Feely, is as comfortable discussing highly technical nuclear concepts as she is talking about shopping for bargains at Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura. “The thing about the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is that they are 85% funded by industry—the people they are supposed to be watching. Now, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, right?” Interestingly, Mothers for Peace currently puts the thrust of its focus on the opinion of an NRC inspector. From 2007 to 2012, Michael Peck was the senior resident inspector for the NRC at Diablo Canyon. During his time there, he began to question the way PG&E was making its assumptions for earthquake projections. In short, he argued that the network of fault lines around the plant were capable of producing a much more powerful seismic event than was being forecasted as a worst-case scenario. Because he found Diablo was not suited to withstand the level of earthquake he thought was possible, Peck formally recommended citing the plant for being in violation of its licensing agreement, which could have led to its closure. That report was written in September of 2011—by October of that same year, the NRC sided with PG&E’s findings in its Research Information Letter (RIL) deeming Diablo safe to operate. Nine months after writing his Dissenting Professional Opinion refuting the RIL, Peck was transferred to Chattanooga, Tennessee. He insists that it was not a punitive move on the part of the NRC, and continues to this day to assert that PG&E’s assumptions about the potential for seismic activity around the plant are faulty.

Over the past four decades Mothers for Peace has amassed a small library of documentation stressing the dangers of Diablo Canyon, and just about every time PG&E releases a study, the group finds ways to poke holes in it. Another area that has raised their collective eyebrows is concerning the use of high burn-up fuel. Jane Swanson, who has been with Mothers for Peace since the beginning, speaks passionately in twenty-minute blocks about the dangers of high burn-up fuel—a type of uranium pellet that allows for more time to pass before it must be replaced. For lack of a better way to describe it, high burn-up fuel is like the high-octane gas you buy at the fuel pump. Yes, it is more expensive, but it is more powerful and gives you better gas mileage. The better Diablo’s gas mileage, the less downtime there is, which means that PG&E sells more kilowatts. Except, according to Swanson, the spent pellets come out much hotter and take much longer to cool. The first stage of that cooling process, when they are placed in a sealed container and submerged underwater inside the plant, is when they are most vulnerable, she claims. “Diablo was not built with high burn-up fuel in mind; it burns hotter, comes out hotter and more radioactive than the plant was designed to handle. And, what if something happens to those pools?”

As we enter the main power generation room, I first realize that nuclear power is just another way to boil water. Before me, I find two massive steam-powered turbines. It is here that I am able to get real hands-on experience at Diablo Canyon. While I watch the shaft on one of the turbines turn many thousands of revolutions per minute, I am told that the facility generates 2,300 megawatts of electricity, enough to power the equivalent of 3 million homes, or 10% of California’s total energy demand. Diablo’s twin steam turbines—both originally built in 1975—could just as easily be sitting in a coal-fired plant somewhere, as the mechanics involved in turning its gigantic flywheels are the same: boil water using some type >>

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of heat source, whether it be coal or uranium, and allow that steam to build to a very high pressure which then turns the shaft. The shaft, which is connected to a series of brushes and wires creates friction, that friction then spawns electricity. That electricity is then sent out to the grid. Officials at PG&E like to say, “If Diablo Canyon were a conventional power plant, it would burn 220 train cars full of coal each day.” As the tour continues through the belly of the beast—it gets hotter, dryer and louder the deeper we go—I find myself wanting to get a closer look at all those spent fuel rods. I am told that after five years the U-235 pellets are considered spent, and there is an elaborate process for partially shutting down the plant, extracting those pellets and placing them in what looks like an Olympic-style swimming pool for cooling over the course of many years. Once the U-235 cools, it becomes less radioactive and the pellets are then taken from the pool and placed in a dry cask outside the facility. Standing at 19-feet tall and 32-feet in diameter with 8-foot thick steel and concrete walls, the dry casks are bolted down on bedrock at the back of the facility, 310-feet above sea level. They are watched by armed guards around the clock. The scene looks something like a San Quentin for uranium, complete with barbed wire fences and machine gun toting sentries. The juxtaposition of the casks against the bucolic Central Coast hills, did strike me as strange and unnatural, but the level of attention they were receiving provided some degree of comfort. As I handed over my ID badge and made my final exit through a radiation detecting scanner, I stood there reflecting on my day. The light turned green and I was deemed “clean,” so I gathered my things. During my visit, I learned a lot about nuclear power and did not find anything that raised my immediate concern. Actually, I felt much more confident knowing that there is a group of highly intelligent people running the place. But, there is a saying in military circles that “armies are built to fight the last war,” and I could not help but wonder if that were the case at Diablo Canyon. I mean, prior to 9/11 who could have ever imagined that a rag-tag group of extremist would fly a pair of commercial jets into the Twin Towers. And, who would have ever thought that Fukushima would meltdown before our eyes in the wake of a 45-foot tidal wave. And, what about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? Weren’t the smartest guys in the room providing scientific studies back then assuring us that nothing could possibly happen to those places, too? One thing I do know is that all of the discussion during my visit was concerning electricity supply, which makes sense because PG&E is a power producer. But, with all of the hand-wringing that takes place locally over Diablo Canyon, and nuclear power in general, why is there not a substantive conversation about reducing demand, in other words conserving? In remembering my grandparents—products of the Great Depression who were constantly turning off lights carelessly left on by their grandchildren—I wonder why, instead of worrying so much about Diablo, we don’t figure out a way to use less of the stuff they are making out there. Or, is that even possible? Is the proverbial horse out of the barn for good? Is the lure of the 70” flat screen TV too strong to avoid flipping a U-turn in our Teslas and Chevy Volts now? Or, is there another way? Is distributed power, setting up individual solar and wind units at home, versus centralized power, through utility companies like PG&E, the way of the future? Again, I don’t have the answer. But, the one thing I do have an answer to after my day out at Diablo, is that all of us have the right, and the responsibility, to keep a close eye on what goes on out there. To borrow the words of Ronald Reagan—a steadfast advocate of nuclear power—who in negotiating with the Soviets adopted the Russian proverb “doveryai no proveryai;” in other words, it is incumbent upon us to “trust, but verify.” SLO LIFE

PG&E offers limited tours of Diablo Canyon which are considered on a case-by-case basis. If you are interested in learning more, please call (805) 546-5280 or email EnergyEducationCenter@pge.com

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